Deputy Premier Yigael Yadin’s Democratic Movement voted 32-6 last night to reject a proposal by the party’s secretariats that it quit the Likud-led coalition government. The vote, by the DM’s executive, was a victory for Yadin who was supported by Justice Minister Samuel Tamir against a strong secessionist group.
Yadin argued that the time was ripe for the DM to exert leverage on Premier Menachem Begin if the latter hoped to preserve his shaky regime until the 1981 elections. The DM differs sharply with Likud over settlement policy and economic measures. But its views have had little impact since it joined the coalition in 1978 as the Democratic Movement for Change, then the third largest faction in the Knesset.
Subsequently, about half of the party’s members defected to form the opposition Shai faction. In recent months, growing dissatisfaction with Begin’s policies built up strong pressure within the DM to break with Likud. Fear that the DM might cease to exist as an independent party if it left the government apparently played a part in last night’s vote.
Tamir warned that its defection would open the way for early elections from which the Labor Party would emerge with a 62-seat majority in the Knesset, allowing it to ignore the DM. He pointed to the fate of the Shai faction which was weakened yesterday when two of its leading Knesset members, Meir Amit and David Golomb, announced that they were joining the Labor Party.
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